Ryder Cup 2027-2045: A Grand Tour of the Last Places Still Above Water
The Ryder Cup, that biennial festival of polite tribalism where Europe and the United States pretend golf is still a matter of continental pride rather than hedge-fund bragging rights, has begun leaking its future venues like a drunken caddie leaks swing tips. In an act of cosmic optimism, the PGA of America and Ryder Cup Europe have sketched out host sites through 2045—roughly the year Miami officially becomes an aquatic theme park and the Arctic Circle opens its first desert-style course.
The freshly anointed list reads like a grand tour of places still above sea level. Adare Manor, County Limerick (2027), will welcome the world to a five-star castle whose room rates already rival the GDP of several island nations. Rome’s Marco Simone (2023) will hand the baton to Bethpage Black in New York (2025), the municipal brute where graffiti once advised visiting Europeans to “swim home.” By 2037, the caravan reaches—wait for it—Frisco, Texas, a city whose very name sounds like a Silicon Valley rebrand for “money.” One can practically hear the collective sigh from Scottish purists who still believe golf was better when sheep doubled as both spectators and agronomists.
From a planetary perspective, the rotation is geopolitically astute: every staging post is safely inside the NATO firewall, so only the exchange rate will be under assault. The Middle East, despite having more disposable sand suitable for shaping faux-Scottish contours than anyone could dream of, remains conspicuously absent. Apparently even the Ryder Cup has standards—perhaps Riyadh’s 120-degree autumns clash with the tournament’s preferred shade of blazer.
Meanwhile, Asia, home to roughly 60% of the world’s population and an unhealthy obsession with perfecting the swing arc, continues to be politely ignored. China could probably build an entire 36-hole venue between breakfast and lunch, but organizers seem worried the trophy might disappear into a Shanghai boardroom before the closing ceremony. Japan, South Korea, and Australia—nations that actually care about the sport—remain Ryder Cup wallflowers, invited only to watch the Netflix documentary.
What the schedule lacks in geographic imagination it compensates for in climate anxiety. Courses in County Limerick and Rome will serve as controlled experiments in “drought-resistant ryegrass,” which sounds like a Pentagon euphemism for “we give up.” By 2045, when the Cup returns to the United States at Hazeltine (again), the Minnesota autumn may feel like Cancun with mosquitoes. Spectators are advised to pack both sunscreen and crampons, just in case the jet stream decides to hold a grudge.
There is, of course, a deeper symbolism at play. The Ryder Cup’s stately procession through the Anglosphere’s moneyed zip codes functions as a movable gated community—a reassuring reminder that, even as the planet convulses, there will always be a perfectly irrigated fairway somewhere for men named Hunter or Henrik to discuss supply-chain disruptions over craft gin. It’s globalization for people who still insist on calling chips “crisps” or “fries” depending on which passport they brandish at check-in.
The broadcast revenues, meanwhile, will continue to bankroll ever more elaborate opening ceremonies—expect drone swarms spelling out “COEXIST” while pyrotechnics spell the same word in burning bunker sand. All of this will be narrated by commentators breathlessly describing the “pressure” of a match that, history shows, is usually decided by which continent booked the better sleep therapist.
In the end, the future venues tell us less about golf than about the species that plays it: we will spend untold millions to shuttle a trophy back and forth across the Atlantic, but we still can’t agree on carbon offsets. The Ryder Cup endures as a comforting ritual—part contest, part corporate retreat, part sepia-toned reassurance that the 19th hole will always have ice. Until, of course, the ice itself runs out.
